From the Rector: Celebrating Absalom Jones

Dear friends,

This Monday, February 13, our church calendar commemorates Absalom Jones, who was the first Black priest ordained in the Episcopal Church. It's coincidental, but fitting, that his feast day (the anniversary of his death) falls in February, the month we now celebrate as Black History Month. Absalom Jones' day has become an important day for our church to celebrate the witness and ministry of Black Episcopalians and to recommit ourselves to working against racial injustice and toward God's vision of Beloved Community.

Absalom Jones was born in slavery in Delaware in 1746. When he was 16, his enslaver Benjamin Wynkoop--an Episcopalian--sold his mother, sister, and brothers, but took Absalom with him to Philadelphia. At age 20 Absalom married Mary Thomas. He and Mary's father pooled their savings and sought donations from abolitionist Quaker friends to purchase Mary's freedom. This allowed their children to be born free. After saving for many more years, Absalom was finally able to purchase his own freedom from Wynkoop at the age of 38, in 1784.

Absalom became a lay minister at St. George's Methodist Church in Philadelphia. He and another free Black lay minister, Richard Allen, built up a large Black membership and founded the Free African Society, a mutual aid group. In 1787 the Society raised funds and constructed a new gallery for the church. However, the church's leadership then demanded that the Black members be segregated in the gallery. Angered at this rebuke, the Black members walked out of the church, never to return.

The Society began to hold their own services and in 1792 they officially formed the African Church of Philadelphia. The members voted to affiliate with the Episcopal Church. Richard Allen preferred to remain in the Methodist tradition and went on to found the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first independent Black denomination in the United States. Absalom Jones remained as the spiritual leader of the new Episcopal congregation, and he and Allen remained friends and colleagues.

In 1794 the church was received into the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania as the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and Absalom Jones was first licensed as a lay reader, then ordained as a deacon in 1795. Sadly, the Diocese discriminated against its new Black congregation, refusing to grant St. Thomas's any representation at the Diocesan Convention. Moreover, Jones would have to wait until 1802 before finally being ordained as the first Black priest in the Episcopal Church.

Absalom Jones was known as a brilliant preacher, a leader of Philadelphia's African-American community, and an advocate against the slave trade. He was also a leader in the effort to care for the sick and dying during Philadelphia's yellow fever epidemic of 1793. He died on February 13, 1818. His church, the African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, remains a vibrant and active congregation and the "mother church" of Black Episcopalians. Episcopal priest Mark Bozzuti-Jones recently published a book about Absalom Jones's life for kids and adults, strikingly illustrated by Christopher M. Taylor. Last Sunday, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry (our first Black Presiding Bishop) visited St. Thomas for a special celebration (you can see a brief news clip of the occasion here).

I'm thankful for the witness of Absalom Jones in our church's history. Learning our history is one way to equip ourselves for the mission God calls us to in our own place and time. I hope you'll join us this Lent for our parish book study on the Rev. Stephanie Spellers' book The Church Cracked Open, which courageously examines a lot of the Episcopal Church's history around race--both the gifts (like the leadership of many brave figures like Absalom Jones) and the failures (like the participation of Episcopalians like Wynkoop in holding slaves, and the discrimination Absalom Jones and so many others have faced and continue to face in our church).

Between now and then, please mark your calendars for our Shrove Sunday celebration on February 19--details below. I'm looking forward to getting ready for Lent together.

In Christ's love,

Stephen